As it is Thanksgiving, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my sincerest thanks for your recent directional change towards transparency with the players. Given a rather turbulent Maple year, I strongly believe that your recent Maple Memos were a breath of fresh air that was really needed. The technical problems with Kishin were a revelation to some and who would have thought that royal styles didn’t have an equal chance to be obtained? (No need to worry, whatever I saved from not buying Royal Styles I burned on Premium Surprise Boxes).

I am currently in my fifth and last year of university and have been playing Maplestory (GMS) on and off since 6th grade. During those off periods, I have played numerous games, Rappelz, Cabal, Exteel, and Ace Online to name a few, and have witnessed both their golden ages and their deaths (some of those listed haven’t quite pulled the plug yet but I assume you get the point). Through those on periods, I have witnessed many ups and downs of Maplestory, but I have never played another game as long as I have played Maplestory, and I believe I never will. As a result, I can confidently say that if you had not accomplished something great for Maplestory, I would not be playing this game more than 10 years after I first started. For that reason, I will never go as far as to say that your direction with the game’s future is a wrong one. And that brings me to the topic of this letter.

It was not change to Maplestory that I opposed. It was also not your direction with the game that I opposed. And it certainly was not your developers that I opposed. It was a lack of discussion that I absolutely abhorred. Whether intentional or unintentional, Maple Memos were a great start towards alleviating that negativity from me. And that is because they satiated my hunger for discussion. Transparency is great for us players but, more than transparency, it was discussion that I really wanted. I understand that you have to take into consideration numerous factors to develop and balance this game for the players. Often times there are factors that we players cannot see, and there will always be changes that we will agree or disagree with. Because of that, when some of the changes we strongly disagree with end up going live, some of us begin to holler. Others quit. And a lot of people turn towards pessimism. You have a lot of responsibility to shoulder when it comes to making a game for the players. However, I strongly believe that this goes beyond making a game for the players. If this was a game that I only had to drop $40, $60, or even $80 for and play for a year or two then sure, you can go ahead and say that all you’re doing is making a game for the players. But as an MMORPG with several years under its belt, as a game that has been a huge part of more than 10 years of my life, and as a game that I have continuously poured money into, I believe that Maplestory is not just a game that you make for the players. It is a game that you make WITH the players. And one cannot make a game with the players without discussion.

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As you have written a number of Maple Memos, you have already demonstrated that you realized the importance of discussion with your players. Regardless, I hope this letter highlights the importance of continual communication. Thank you for the Maple Memos and thank you for talking to us. I look forward to your future memos. Happy Thanksgiving and congratulations on v200!

OP desperately wants to drink the kool-aid, they literally just removed an entire fucking continent, just to take away a quest reward instead of just deleting the quest and OP is delusional enough to think nexon is transparent or has anything but sheer apathy for their non-korean playerbase.

I didn't know what it meant to drink the kool-aid until now and reading about it was certainly interesting so thank you for that. Whenever I teleported to Ulu city, I'd see signs of hackers in every single channel. I'm also unaware of the technical problems the Singapore region could have posed to future updates. And I certainly do not know if their decision to remove Singapore was a good decision or not. If the intent was to simply remove badges with potential then I disagree with their decision, but until Sengoku is re-released or until Nexon speaks up, we won't fully know what their intent was regarding badges. I'm not saying that players should just mindlessly agree with Nexon's decisions. On the contrary, I acknowledge that there will always be decisions that some players will disagree with. The point of this letter is to show appreciation for transparency and communication, and to encourage further transparency and communication, because perhaps, just perhaps, some players including myself can accept the occasional bad change if Nexon would just talk to us.

Nothing is transparent about being banned and being unable to have a proper discussion with an appeal board. I have been on the receiving end of a ban, but fortunately I was found to be reasonably innocent of my offense and was un-banned. I know exactly how horrible it feels to be banned unjustly, and I know exactly how terrifying it is to be at the mercy of another person. Personally, I'd like Nexon to honestly reveal the ban appeal process and inform us of what kinds of qualified personnel are a part of the process and the decision making. At the very least, being able to have confidence in the system would put me at ease, but that confidence has to start from Nexon. Out of everyone that viewed this post, we could probably come up with hundreds of different ways to criticize or improve the game, but that would completely derail the point of this letter: to appreciate their start towards transparency and communication, and to encourage further transparency and communication.